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March 13, 2017

School of Somnomancy

Arcane TraditionNotes from the Nails: something I hear all the time is that the Sleep spell is awesome at level 1 but useless by level 4. That doesn't seem right to me, so I made a subclass to keep it relevant. Sweet dreams!

School of Somnomancy

The somnomancers are an idiosyncratic bunch, given to fancies, daydreams and odd sartorial choices, and it is no surprise that they are rarely accorded any respect by mages of other schools. Although their obsession with sleep is occasionally useful, such as when someone needs to be hypnotized or must have their dreams interpreted, it is more often a source of humor – much to the chagrin of so-called 'pajama-mages'!Soporific Savant
When you select this school at 2nd level, you gain some degree of control over your own sleep patterns. From now on, you only require four hours of sleep in a long rest and cannot be put to sleep by magic.

Deep Sleep
Also at
2nd level, you add the sleep spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. Whenever you cast thisspell, the total number of hit points that can be affected is equal to double the number rolled on the dice. In addition, the radius of the spell is increased to 30 feet.

Careful Somnomancy
Beginning
at 6th level, you can freely choose the order in which creatures are affected by a sleep spell you cast.

Dreamspeaker
At
10th level, you add the spell dream to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast this spell, the messenger may jump between up to 12 creatures (each makes their saving throw against the spell separately), conversing with any or all of them. They can only appear monstrous to one of the targets, however, and the spell ends immediately after that option is utilized.

Fitful Slumber
When
you reach 14th level, you can give creatures that you put to sleep terrible nightmares. At the start of their turn, you can choose to make any creature that is under the influence of a sleep spell that you cast suffer 3d6 psychic damage. This damage cannot wake a creature up, nor can it reduce a creature below 1 hit point.

I am expecting people to upcast the spell, yes. It's the entire focus of the school! And I do imagine it won't be enough to reliably hit high-CR monsters, but it certainly keeps the spell relevant up to medium CRs, and the general expectation is that high-level characters should be facing a mixture of high, medium and low CRs anyway. That's my thinking.

Average hp influenced, rounded down (with somnomancy):1st level- 22 (45)2- 31 (63)3- 40 (81)4- 49 (99)5- 58 (109)6- 67 (135)7- 76 (153)8- 85 (171)9- 94 (189)This means that as a normal wizard, you can use that Sleep at high levels to put to sleep pretty powerful enemy spellcasters, but not many creatures above CR 5 or so. As a high level somnomacer, you can put to sleep without a save some adult dragons (IIRC), a giant or some pretty strong demons (if they can sleep), but that still does not kill them, and will only work for a while (and any ally can wake them up). That keeps the main use of sleep against either mobs (which are no problem for a high level wizard anyway) or against enemy humanoids, mostly spellcasters.

As a somnomancer, the spell is definitely still viable at high levels (even if not in every situation), and is amazingly powerful until about 10th level, when the hp of a BBEG starts to get higher than what the spell can do.Overall- seems balanced to me.

Careful seems off. So, 3 big things with 40 hp, one's down to 20, 5 little things 10, two that've been to 4.. so if you get say 38 hp worth, you could choose the weakened big guy, a little guy, and the weakened little guys. Which is probably a lot more useful than the usual situation of the little guys all being KOed.

You don't know that as a player though. So, you may try effecting the big guy that hasn't been hit yet. Spell fails, no one sleeps.

It's true that you often don't know your enemies' exact HP totals, but I'd argue that that problem is inherent in the sleep spell whether you have this feature or not. Changing the order is a gamble... But casting it in the first place is also a gamble. It's part of the fun!

Also I'd note that the ability allows you to avoid targetting allies if you're casting into melee, which is something that has come up in a game I'm running. So it's got utility both on the offensive side and in the avoidance of friendly fire.